Laurence van Cott Niven (born April 30, 1938) is a US science fiction author. Perhaps his best-known work is Ringworld (1970), which received Hugo, Locus, Ditmar, and Nebula awards.

Biography

Larry Niven was born in Los Angeles, California. He graduated with a B.A. in mathematics (with a minor in psychology) from Washburn University, Kansas, in 1962. He has since lived in Los Angeles suburbs, including Chatsworth and Tarzana as a full-time writer. He is independently wealthy, having inherited a substantial amount from his grandfather, Edward Donehy .

Career

Niven is the author of numerous science fiction short stories and novels, beginning with his 1964 story "The Coldest Place" (which in the story was said to be the dark side of Mercury, which was thought to be tidally locked with the Sun at the time it was written but which ironically enough was found to rotate in a 2:3 resonance just months before the story was published). He won the Hugo Award for Best Short Story in 1967 for Neutron Star, in 1972 for Inconstant Moon , and in 1975 for The Hole Man . He won the Hugo Award for Best Novelette in 1976 for The Borderland of Sol .

Niven has also written scripts for various science fiction television shows, including the original Land of the Lost series and Star Trek: The Animated Series ("The Slaver Weapon" with the Kzinti species). One of his short stories, "Inconstant Moon", was adapted for an episode of the television series The Outer Limits.

Many of Niven's stories take place in his Known Space universe, in which humanity shares the several solar systems nearest to Sol with over a dozen alien species, including species known as the Kzinti, and Pierson's Puppeteers, which are frequently central characters. The Ringworld series is set in the Known Space universe.

Niven has also written a logical fantasy series set in The Warlock's Era, detailed in The Magic Goes Away. There is a Magic: the Gathering card named Nevinyrral's Disk, which contains Larry Niven's name backwards. When activated it destroys all creature, enchantment, and artifact cards in play, including itself. This is a reference to the Warlock's Disc from this series, which when activated drains all magic from a region by using it up with an open-ended enchantment.

In recent years, most of his writing has been in collaboration with Jerry Pournelle and/or Steven Barnes.

Miscellaneous notes

A thinly disguised Niven appears as the character "Lawrence Van Cott" in the Greg Bear novel The Forge of God. A part of the computer game Wing Commander II takes place in the "Niven Sector" (it is believed that the Kilrathi, the feline alien enemy in the Wing Commander series, were based on Niven's Kzinti). There are those who think that Niven numbers may have been named in his honor, but despite his popularity and mathematical background, they are actually named for Ivan M. Niven. Niven's idea of a beanstalk sucking dry a planet (see Rainbow Mars ) seems to be copied in the animated movie . That indicates that he posseses a time machine because Rainbow Mars was published 1999 whereas Kaena: The Prophecy was aired June 2004.#

Larry Niven introduced the idea and terminus of a flash crowd in his novel Flash Crowd 1973, which evolved 2003 to flash mob. People meet together to protest in a creative way in a specific time and space to disappear as unobstrusive as they appeared some minutes later.

Bibliography

• World of Ptavvs (1966)
• Neutron Star (Collection of short stories, 1968)
• A Gift from Earth (1968)
• The Shape of Space (Collection of short stories, 1969)
• Ringworld (1970)
• All the Myriad Ways (Collection of short stories, 1971)
• The Flying Sorcerers (1971) (with David Gerrold)
• The Flight of the Horse (Collection of short stories, 1973)
• Protector (1973)
• Inconstant Moon (Collection of short stories, 1973)
• A Hole in Space (Collection of short stories, 1974)
• The Mote in God's Eye (1974) (with Jerry Pournelle; substantial contribution by Robert Heinlein)
• Tales of Known Space (Collection of short stories, 1975)
• The Long ARM of Gil Hamilton (Collection of short stories, 1976)
• A World Out of Time (1976)
• Inferno (1976) (with Jerry Pournelle)
• Lucifer's Hammer (1977) (with Jerry Pournelle)
• The Magic Goes Away (1978)
• Convergent Series (Collection of short stories, 1979)
• The Patchwork Girl (1980)
• The Ringworld Engineers (1980)
• Dream Park (1981) (with Steven Barnes)
• Oath of Fealty (1981) (with Jerry Pournelle)
• The Magic May Return (1981) (editor)
• The Descent of Anansi (1982) (with Steven Barnes)
• The Integral Trees (1984)
• More Magic (Collection of short stories, 1984) (editor)
• Niven's Laws (Collection of short stories, 1984)
• Footfall (1985) (with Jerry Pournelle)
• Berserker Base (1985) (with Poul Anderson, Edward Bryant , Stephen R. Donaldson, Fred Saberhagen, Connie Willis, and Roger Zelazny)
• Limits (Collection of short stories, 1985)
• The Smoke Ring (1987)
• The Legacy of Heorot (1987) (with Jerry Pournelle, Steven Barnes)
• The Barsoom Project (1989) (with Steven Barnes)
• N-Space (Collection of short stories, 1990)
• Achilles' Choice (1991) (with Steven Barnes)
• Playgrounds of the Mind (Collection of short stories, 1991)
• Fallen Angels by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, Michael Flynn (1991). (Prometheus Award) ISBN 0743435826 Electronic edition free at the Baen Free Library.
• The California Voodoo Game (1992) (with Steven Barnes)
• Green Lantern: Ganthet's Tale (1992) (comic book with John Byrne)
• Crashlander (Collection of short stories, 1994)
• The Gripping Hand (US) / The Moat Around Murcheson's Eye (UK) (1994) (with Jerry Pournelle)
• Beowulf's Children (1995) (with Jerry Pournelle, Steven Barnes) also know as The Dragons of Heorot (UK Edition)
• Flatlander (Collection of short stories, 1995)
• The Ringworld Throne (1996)
• Three Books of Known Space (1996), containing World of Ptavvs, A Gift from Earth, and Tales of Known Space
• Destiny's Road (1997)
• Rainbow Mars (1999)
• The Burning City (2000) (with Jerry Pournelle)
• Saturn's Race (2000) (with Steven Barnes)
• Scatterbrain (Collection of short stories, 2003)
• Ringworld's Children (2004)

External links

• Known Space - The Future Worlds of Larry Niven
• His Own Biography
• Bibliography on SciFan